Starling Travel

The Colorado River snakes its way through Austin, creating Town Lake and many other waterways. Along that river floats the Lonestar Riverboat.

• Welcome to LonestarRiverboat.com

If you have ever had fantasies about taking a riverboat ride, you can have them fulfilled in Austin. Take a sunset cruise and watch the sky turn red over the water while resting on the deck. The evening cruise is a great way to see the bats of Austin as they come out of the Congress Bridge.

Interestingly, Google Maps captured the Lonestar Riverboat when it was at dock. If you zoom in by the water on 1st Street, you can see the dock and the riverboat on the water.

Where: Lonestar Riverboat 1st Street & Riverside Drive, Austin, Texas Google Map Phone: (512) 327-1388

Every spring, the bats migrate to Austin from Mexico. They have found the cracks and creavices of the Congress Bridge a hospitable place to nest during the day. Every evening, they swarm out of the bridge and into the city to eat between 10,000 and 30,000 pounds of insects. The bats have become a beloved fixture of the city nightscape.

• This is Austin – Bats

• Welcome to Bat Conservation International – Congress Bridge in Austin, TX

• Night Wings – The Bats of Austin

Although they go back to Mexico during the winter, the bats have become a permanent fixture in Austin, Texas. The tourists and locals alike await for their return every year and enjoy their silent flight across the sky at twilight.

Where: The Bats at Congress Bridge: Congress Ave & Cesar Chavez St W, Austin, TX 78701 Google Maps Bat Hotline: 512-416-5700 (ext. 3636) for the latest flight times

Austin seems to be burgeoning with museums. When I compare it to my hometown, I feel a little ashamed of the plethora of pioneer museums when Austin has so much art and WORLD history at their disposal.

• The Harry Ransom Center

The Harry Ransom Center has a wide variety of exhibits to enjoy while you are there and if you are stuck at home or work right now, you can take a virtual vacation with their online exhibits.

• The Gutenberg Bible at the Ransom Center Online Exhibit

• The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers Online Exhibit

• David Douglas Duncan Online Exhibit

• Gone With The Wind Online Exhibit

Take a break from your day and enjoy the art and history from the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.

Where: 21st and Guadalupe, Austin, Texas 78713 Google Map Telephone: 512-471-8944

Lonely Planet is the guide book that you should carry around if you are backpacking across Europe. That’s the feeling that I get when I read their books. I feel like if I was a hippie and I just picked up and decided to hitch-hike across the states, I should have a Lonely Planet guidebook in my backpack.

Their review of Austin, Texas is a must-read if you have never been to the city.

• Austin Travel Information | Lonely Planet Destination Guide

I love travelling to a new city. It gives me the chance to obsess about new history, museums and restaurants. Lonely Planet helps me along the way.

In a small Queen Anne home in Texas, William Sidney Porter rested from his wide array of jobs. He would later be known as O. Henry, penning one of the most famous American Christmas stories, “The Gift of the Magi.”

Imprisoned on embezzlement charges, he wrote some of his stories in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Instead of moving the prison and turning it into a museum, they have made a museum of the modest home he lived in while he worked odd jobs in Austin.

• City of Austin – Parks and Recreation: O. Henry Museum

The museum is a quick glimpse into Porter’s life in Austin, Texas.

“Porter lived in this 1886 Queen Anne-style cottage from 1893 to 1895. His home has since been restored and now contains artifacts and memorabilia from Porter’s life in Austin. The O. Henry Museum is a National Register Property and a National Literary Landmark of the City of Austin.”

This museum is a chance to see where Porter lived while he gathered the experience he needed to write some of the masterpieces of the American short story.

Where: 409 East Fifth Street Austin, Texas 78701 Google Map Phone: (512)472-1903

Austin has a strong connection with art, whether its music, film or the visual arts. There are two museums of art in Austin, each housing different exhibits.

• Austin Museum of Art

I find that every art museum has its own unique treasures to show me. A small museum in Boise is very different from the larger museums in San Francisco, but each one has its own personality and beauty.

Where – Two Locations:

AMOA-Downtown – 823 Congress Avenue at 9th Street Austin, Texas Google Map Phone: 512-495-9224

AMOA-Laguna Gloria – 3809 West 35th Street (west of Mopac) Austin, Texas Google Map Phone: 512-458-8191

No trip to Texas would be complete without eating real barbeque. Not that stuff that you mix in with your ground beef for sloppy joes, I’m talking REAL Texas Barbeque. Stubb’s is the restaurant to indoctrinate you.

• Welcome to Stubb’s!

At true Texas man, Christopher B. Stubblefield had many wild adventures before he opened the current restaurant in Austin, Texas. From learning to cook in Lubbock, Texas, to serving 10,000 soldiers in the Korean War, Stubbs has kept the eating experience a beautiful fusion of food and music. Stubb’s restaurant has been the home to many famous live musicians who have played for their supper.

The BBQ sauce is such a legend that you can probably purchase it in your local grocery store. Imagine Mike’s surprise when he saw Stubb’s now-familiar face beaming down at him from the shelf in Salt Lake City, Utah. A little piece of Texas was waiting in our grocery store all along and he had to travel all the way to Austin to find it.

No trip to Austin is complete without a visit to Stubb’s Restaurant.

Where: 801 Red River Austin, Texas Google Map Phone: 512-480-8341

I remember as a child, my parents would watch Austin City Limits every week. This was before there were several music stations on television. If you wanted to see music on television, you had a choice between Lawrence Welk, Hee Haw and Austin City Limits. Strangely, my parents watched all three.

• Austin City Limits

Until I started researching Austin Texas, I never made the connection between the television show of my childhood and the city. Every year they have a festival. This year it’s September 15-17, 2006, so I won’t be there to see it. They still show Austin City Limits on PBS every week, which makes me smile. They outlasted Lawrence AND Hee Haw.

I’m always fascinated by restaurants that name themselves after a city. Big Apple Pizzeria is one of those places that focuses on how “New York” their pizza is. Having never been to New York, pizza is something that I equate with my hometown, Salt Lake City, so having them brag about being like New York pizza isn’t really an enticement to me.

Good food is, though.

We went to Big Apple to try out their original “Bender”. In their own words:

“A Bender is Big Apple Pizza’s own original creation. Your choice of meat and cheese is heated on pizza crust then topped with onion, green pepper, lettuce and tomato and then folded over to create a delicious pizza bread sandwich.”

When I read that description off the menu that had been left on my windshield out loud to Mike, we decided to go to Big Apple the next day. We HAD to go on a Bender…

Since there were no pictures of a Bender, I had to ask the guy behind the counter about it:

“Is it messy?”

“Messy?”

“Yeah, is it going to drip?”

“Yeah, it will probably drip.”

He should have just told me that I wouldn’t be able to eat it with my hands. It’s definitely a knife and fork meal, so don’t order it and expect to be able to eat it on the run in your car. That being said, it is worth every second you spend at the table with your knife and fork. Food this good shouldn’t be eaten on the run.

To top off the meal, we ordered their cannoli:

“Your menu said you have cannolis?”

“Yeah, which do you want, chocolate or normal?”

Mike and I looked at each other and I answered, “One of each.”

We have been driving up to Park City for our cannolis because we haven’t been able to find a good one down here. The ones from Big Apple were a little too sweet for my taste. I prefer the marscapone to be a little more savory, so we’ll still go up to Park City for cannolis, but there is no where else where we can get a Bender.

It’s a Salt Lake City Original, and that’s something to brag about!

Big Apple Pizzeria

Where (Two Locations):

2939 East 3300 South, Salt Lake City, Utah Google Map Phone: 801-485-4534

7206 South 900 East, Midvale, Utah Google Map Phone: 801-568-9095

The folks at Houseplant Picture Studios found a few books of family photos at a swap meet in Huntington Beach, California. They feature pictures from a family that probably owned a liquor store.

• Houseplant Picture Studio presents…PHOTOS OF AN UNKNOWN FAMILY WHO PROBABLY OWNED A LIQUOR STORE

The people at Houseplant described their find:

“We purchased two hefty photo albums filled-to-the-brim with family photos of a hitherto unknown family. We haven’t yet taken the time to look at the back of every photo to try to figure out the family’s name. We have noticed that a lot of the photos feature family members standing in or in front of a nice-looking, fully-stocked liquor store. It’s quite obvious that the family pictured in the photo albums owned the liquor store.”

The best thing that I like about the Liquor Store Family are the photos that they took traveling.

I love looking through these photos, imagining stories about these people. They traveled with their children. They traveled with another couple. I imagine that the men are brothers and they took many trips together. His lovely, red-headed wife always had her little handbag with her and her hair is always perfectly coifed. It seems like he loved her very much because he took so many pictures of her. She’s always there smiling.

Next time you’re taking photographs on your vacation, look at them through the eyes of a stranger and imagine someone years from now seeing you in front of the Eiffel Tower posing for an eternity.